At the April 2 briefing: (from left to right) MOIA Commissioner Nisha Agarwal, MOIA Assistant Commissioner Kavita Pawria-Sanchez, Raluca Oncioiu from Catholic Charities Community Services and Maryann Tharappel from New York Legal Assistance Group (Photo by Jehangir Khattak for Voices of NY)

President Obama’s immigration relief action may have been temporarily blocked by a Texas judge, but the city of New York and nonprofit organizations working with the city are proceeding with efforts to offer free legal screening and advice to immigrants, so as to be ready, says Nisha Agarwal, commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs (MOIA), to implement the president’s program once it is upheld.

In addition, as Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYS Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced on April 2, a joint task force to be led by MOIA and the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs will work to uncover and fight immigration services fraud.

Both for the sake of their own applications for immigration relief, and to help others, immigrants should take advantage, Agarwal said, of hotlines to report abuses and fraudulent practices by unscrupulous “notarios” and others operating within immigrant communities. The Attorney General’s Immigration Services Fraud Unit Hotline is 866-390-2992.

“They can just screw up your immigration case,” Agarwal said at an April 2 briefing organized jointly by MOIA and the Center for Community and Ethnic Media. The briefing, for the community and ethnic media in the city, was held at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

“We are getting the word out that there are trusted places to obtain information,” said Agarwal, whose office is promoting the first of many planned free legal screenings around the city on April 12 at Temple Emanu-El at 1 East 65th St.

Individuals can register for the screening by calling 212-419-3700. The screening will evaluate individuals’ eligibility for either the expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program or the new Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program. A supervising staff member will then provide an assessment of precisely which options the individual may qualify for. All the immigration attorneys at the screenings will be from nonprofits.

“It’s a way to receive advice in a free, safe environment,” said Maryann Tharappel, staff attorney for immigrant protection at the New York Legal Assistance Group, who also spoke at the briefing at the CUNY J School.

It is estimated that registration for the free legal screening will take 10-15 minutes (hence the suggestion that people pre-register by telephone), the screening itself, in which documentation will be reviewed, about 30 minutes, and the assessment about 15 minutes. MOIA, which will be sponsoring the April 12 screening along with the NYS Office for New Americans and Catholic Charities Community Services, estimates that 800-1,000 people can be screened during an all-day screening event.

Also at the briefing, Agarwal spoke about the success to date of the IDNYC effort, reporting that more than 100,000 municipal ID applications have been processed. She said there will soon be new locations for people to apply for the card, including pop-up sites that will travel to different neighborhoods to accept applications.

Headquartered in the back of a small supermarket in Dalton, GA, the Coalición de Líderes Latinos de Georgia (CLILA) has served the area’s Hispanic community for 13 years, Mundo Hispánico reports. CLILA offers English and citizenship classes and DACA application help, among other legal and community services. The coalition was founded in 2006 by Mexican immigrant América Gruner, who sought to mobilize the area’s large Hispanic population (mostly working in the carpet industry) against anti-immigrant measures but found that many were not eligible to vote because they didn’t apply for citizenship, or didn’t speak the language. Link to original story →

The number of Puerto Rican women receiving benefits from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) dropped by 43 percent in the past five years, El Vocero reports. The numbers reflect a childbirth drop partially caused by the Zika virus scare, during which many women avoided pregnancy, but the main cause is the mass emigration of young families away from the island. The decrease in the federal program of recipients has also hit businesses that provide WIC-funded foods: 18 percent of them have closed, and the rest have been forced to diversify their operations. Link to original story →

An investigation by El Nuevo Día shows the “extreme decay” of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, as the municipal government reduced its contractual commitments almost by half compared to 2013. As residents complain of crumbling roads, criminality and lack of cleaning services, the city has had a population loss of more than 90,000 residents in the past 10 years. The loss in municipal income has resulted in a $183 million debt in spite of a $73 million budget cut. The problem is exacerbated by non-payments the Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico and the city’s difficulties in borrowing money. Link to original story →

Pro-immigrant organizations in Georgia expressed relief and surprise as Republican Gov. Brian Kemp emerged as an unlikely ally this week, Mundo Hispánico reports. Kemp abolished a board investigating immigration law violations which has been accused of illegally harassing immigrant communities. Kemp also vetoed the SB15 bill, requiring Georgia schools to investigate students for “suspicious activities” and create “school safety coaches,” which activists feared would target minority youths. “This is definitely a victory for us,” said Adelina Nicholls, of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR). “You have your ups and downs but this triumph motivates us to keep going.”
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